


what if the storm ends

by viscrael



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Action/Adventure, Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Missing Persons, Slow Burn, broganes, conspiracies & shit, mature rating is for violence later on bc. theyre superheros Shit Happens
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-07 03:19:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15209738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viscrael/pseuds/viscrael
Summary: “Right—”His blaster is kicked out of his grasp before he can finish, the weapon flying across the hallway and skidding against the tile floor. He goes to dive for it, but the intruder has him pressed against the wall before he can even take a step, a blade cold against Lance’s neck.“Don’t move,” the intruder says, voice gruff and distorted by his mask.--alternatively titled: the superhero au absolutely nobody asked for





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> a few things:
> 
> 1\. u can find me talking abt this on tumblr [here](http://viscrael.tumblr.com/tagged/superhero-au)  
> 2\. i dont know what the fuck im doing i just know that ive always wanted to write a superhero au and that i love klance so this was. created  
> 3\. thannnk a million times to natodiangelo and transryou on here for their hellppp so far   
> 4\. idk if ill have a regular updating schedule but? idk i Want to have one but im abt to start college so we'll c what happens yo  
> 5\. im sorry
> 
> enjoy

_“Carapace to Echo, come in Echo, over.”_

“Yeah, I’m here. What’s up? Over.”

“ _Anything on your side? Over.”_

“Nah, the most I’ve gotten is a raccoon turning a trashcan over. It was pretty loud, actually. Over.”

“ _Same here. Well, not a raccoon—mostly Vine’s newest project is making a lot of noise so it’s not been, you know, quiet over here—”_

_“I can hear you guys.”_

“Yeah, we know.”

_“It’s not my fault that rewiring isn’t keeping it dead silent in here, I didn’t realize you guys wanted to sit and do nothing for twelve hours—”_

“ _Anyway, Echo, we’ll check in again in ten minutes. Over_.”

“Sure. Not like I have anything better to do. Over.”

Lance sighs as his communicator clicks off, signaling the conversation’s end and effectively plunging him back into thick, heavy silence once again. The night is uncomfortably warm for late fall, the temperature somehow still in the eighties, and despite his costume's lack of sleeves, it isn’t doing him much favors in the humidity. He’s been out here since eight o’clock, sweaty in his intended-to-be-breathable blue fabric. He makes a mental note to talk to Coran later about having some sort of temperature-regulating technology added to his costume.

There’s a crash from the street across from him. He perks up, immediately on alert. There’s some kind of action going on finally—maybe the villain they’re waiting for finally showed up, or at least there could be some kind of petty shuffle, a purse-snatcher or some other small-time criminal he can go after if only to occupy his time—but the raccoon from earlier scurries across the street and out of sight, a piece of meat in its mouth.

Lance leans his head back against the building and groans. He doesn’t really know what he expected from a twelve-hour security job standing outside of one of the most well-regulated military schools in the state.

When the Gila Bend Garrison approached A.L.T.E.A asking for their protection, Lance’s initial response was to be smug. The irony of the school he’d attended, where he’d mostly been ridiculed and discouraged, asking _him_ only a few years later for protection, wasn’t lost on him.

Of course, it wasn’t like they _knew_ that they were asking a recently graduated student for help, but even if he couldn’t reveal his civilian identity, meeting the head instructor who’d made his life hell for four years and hearing him say things like _w_ _e’re at your mercy_ and _th_ _ank you for your protection_ and _w_ _e wanted the best of the best to defend our facility_ still left Lance feeling a little high on pride, anyway. Pidge had told him not to get a big head about it, but hey, how often did he get to prove his least favorite person wrong? So he cut himself some slack and allowed himself to feel a little smug about it, that’s all.

But hearing Commander Iverson praise him for the same abilities he’d said Lance would never make use of is definitely not the same as taking back-door duty for twelve hours on a Wednesday night. So far, the original request was the highlight of this job. Everything after it has been boring at best.

Like now, as he stands at the back entrance of the main building, shuffling his weight from one leg to the other and counting the streetlights he can make out from here. In ten minutes, he’ll be able to check in with Hunk and Pidge again, something he often finds to be more of a burden on other jobs—it can get irritating to have to check in when in the middle of action or scouting the area—but tonight, he can’t wait until time’s up and he can just _talk_ to someone else.

At least Hunk and Pidge are together in the security room, watching the cameras. Lance just has to stand here at the back entrance, watching an empty street, no cars or people or sign of life for miles and miles across from him. The raccoon was the most interesting thing that’s happened to him in four hours.

_Ugh_.

It’s been just shy of nine minutes when he gets sick of waiting. He presses down on his communicator, bringing the device on his wrist up to his mouth. “Echo to Carapace, come in Carapace, over.”

There’s a moment with no response. Then: “ _Carapace here. What’s up? Over.”_

“I know we’re just supposed to be checking in and whatever,” Lance says, tapping his foot against the freshly cut grass, “but…you don’t really think this guy is gonna show, do you? Over.”

There’s a crackle as the other communicator turns on, then Pidge’s voice comes through. “ _If you want to know my opinion, I think it’s pretty unlikely, all things considered. Over.”_

“Great,” Lance grumbles. Unfortunately, he trusts Pidge’s opinions about this kind of thing. “Why do you think it’s unlikely? Over.”

“ _Because think about it.”_ There’s a sound like a watch beeping, but it stops a moment later. Lance assumes it’s the “project” Hunk said Pidge has been fiddling with all night. He kind of regrets not bringing his own form of entertainment with him. _“The most reason we have to believe he’d even_ target _the Garrison is that he’s been going after other government buildings, but let’s be real—this place doesn’t exactly match the profiles of any of his other targets. What could he gain from breaking into a military school that he couldn’t get from, I don’t know, literally any other government building?”_

“Maybe the Garrison is behind some kinda conspiracy,” Lance says. “I wouldn’t put it past them.”

Pidge snorts. _“Maybe. But it doesn’t line up with the other places he already hit. And if he’s only taking documents and classified information, as opposed to lives, then I just don’t see what the Garrison has to offer him. It feels to me like administration is just paranoid.”_

“So, what, they’re just being cautious for the kids’ sake?”

_“Exactly.”_

“Maybe,” Lance agrees. “I hope not.”

_“You hope they get broken into?”_

“I _hope_ that we don’t just spend twelve hours doing nothing. I’m bored as shit out here. At least you guys have each other and some screens to watch! I got nothing.” Despite Pidge and Hunk being on the direct other side of campus, he pouts into his communicator, settling one hand on his hip.

Hunk’s voice takes over. _“I know it sucks, man. We all have other things we’d rather be doing right now. But we just gotta treat this like any other job, yeah?”_

Lance refrains from mentioning that he was supposed to visit his mom tonight, as he’s done for the past twenty-four hours since they were assigned this job. There’s no point in bringing it up to Hunk or Pidge, since it’s not _their_ fault that he had to cancel on her in such short notice. And besides, it would just make Hunk feel worse. No point in adding that negativity when the night’s already been so boring.

But, still. He can’t help thinking about his family at home. His mom’s probably gone to bed by now, but he knows his little brother Luis will still be awake, probably watching Minecraft videos on his laptop. He wonders if Luis noticed that Lance wasn’t there for dinner tonight, even though he promised he’d come every other Wednesday.

When he called to tell his mom that he couldn’t come— _the pharmacy called, I have to take another shift tomorrow night, I’m sorry Mama, I’ll come next Wednesday to make up for it, I wish I could be there_ —she’d told him it was alright, and that she understood he couldn’t put his life on hold for her. But he’s still thinking about it now.

He misses them.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Lance sighs. “Let me know if there’s any movement on the cameras. Over.”

_“Will do. Over.”_

The communicator shuts off. Once again, it’s silent.

Lance sits on the ground, his legs crossed in front of him with his back to the building. It’s the first time he’s sat down all night, and he sighs in relief when he’s on the ground. Combined with the heat and lack of anything substantial to do, the hours standing up just make him more and more aware of the home-cooked meal he missed to be here.

“God, I hope he shows up,” Lance mumbles to himself, leaning his head back to stare at the sky with its pinprick stars. The Garrison is in a small town in the middle of the desert, meaning the stars are vibrant and visible out here. It was the only good thing about living at the Garrison for four years, Lance used to think. Even if his instructors could be shitty and his peers mostly ignored or ridiculed him, at least he could sneak out onto the roof after a long day and look at the sky. Sometimes he could even convince Hunk and Pidge to join him, if they weren’t too busy being nerds or fuddy-duddies.

He gets the urge to share the memory with Hunk. Just as he reaches for the communicator on his wrist to reminisce about their high school years, Pidge’s voice flickers through, freaked out and urgent. “ _Vine to Echo, come in, there’s been movement on the monitors, over.”_

“What? Seriously?” Lance jumps up to his feet. Oh _fuck_ yeah.

_“The cameras at the west courtyard have gone out,”_ Hunk says. There’s a sound like frantic typing. Probably Pidge. _“We need to—”_

“I’m near the west courtyard,” Lance interrupts, pulling his stun blaster from the holster at his side. It’s powerful enough to pack a punch, but not enough to kill. Killing’s not really the way A.L.T.E.A. likes to work. “I’m headed that way. Over.”

_“Lance—”_

“It’s Echo!” he says, already jogging away from his post. There’s a frustrated huff from the other line—Hunk or Pidge, he isn’t sure—but he switches his communicator to silent after that.

The courtyard is huge, but it’s mostly just a lawn with a section placed off for kids to eat at lunch, complete with a circle of picnic tables. The street light near the west end of the courtyard has gone off. That must be where the camera was.

How this guy managed to turn off the cameras without letting Pidge and Hunk get a look at him, Lance doesn’t know. He holds his blaster closer to his chest as he dives towards one of the tables, cautious.

No sign of anybody here. Lance scouts out the area for a moment more, but still, nothing.

Into his communicator, he whispers, “We missed him. Carapace, any sign where he could be headed now? Over.”

_“It looks like he’s headed to the faculty dormitory,”_ Hunk says. _“The cameras at the admissions building have gone out.”_

“He’s leaving a trail of broken cameras?”

_“Seems like it.”_

It only takes Lance a moment to remember where the faculty building is. He heads that way as quietly as he can, whispering to Hunk. “How has he been taking the cameras out so easily without getting caught?”

Pidge chimes in, “ _It looks like he’s melting them from the base up.”_

“Oh shit.”

_“You’re coming up on the faculty dorms,”_ Hunk says. _“Give us a visual.”_

Lance stops at the entrance and presses his back flat to the building, making himself as unnoticeable as he can. “Nothing so far. Wait—shit. The door handle’s melted.”

_“He’s keeping the property damage to a minimum at least,”_ Pidge mutters.

“I’m going in.”

Hunk starts to protest again— _“Wait at least until we can send back up that way!”—_ but Lance ignores it and slips inside the building as quietly as he can. He’ll get reprimanded for that later, but there’s not much going through his head except the desire to chase this excitement. The prospect of catching this guy makes a grin tug at his lips, his hand tightening around the base of his blaster.

It’s pitch black inside the dormitory. Lance takes a hand off his blaster and raises it to his mask, pressing on the side of his eye coverings to switch to night vision. Thank God for A.L.T.E.A.’s expert costume design.

The ability is especially appreciated now, as he steps into the building. Because they didn’t have a concrete idea of when this criminal would strike, the dormitories weren’t evacuated. Lance isn’t sure why the alarms haven’t been triggered already, but until they go off, stealth and subtlety is pretty high on Lance’s priority list. He hopes it’s on their culprit’s, too.

With night vision on, he can see the long hallway, the stairs to his right, the kitchen to his left, and rows and rows of white, closed doors. He can’t risk calling Hunk and Pidge again in case it alerts the guy to Lance’s presence, and without their help, he can’t follow the trail of broken cameras. He’ll have to do things the old-fashioned way.

He makes a clicking noise with his tongue, light and quiet as if testing how much noise he can get away with, and waits.

There—he can hear it. _Someone’s moving around upstairs._

Bingo.

Lance takes off for the stairway, holding his blaster closer to him. He clicks the safety off and double checks that it’s at full charge, despite having checked several hundred times in the past four hours. He’s already excited at the chase, the knowledge that he’s only a staircase away from getting to the intruder. He hasn’t seen any action in what feels like months, too busy with press and small-time criminals that barely struggle and balancing college life with heroism. He’s itching for a good, _challenging_ fight.

Maybe this guy will give him one.

The second floor is just as quiet and dark as the first, but this time he sees the silhouette of someone disappearing down the end of the hallway, turning left. Lance takes off after him, abandoning hope of being quiet as he lets his footfalls crescendo, full speed as he rounds the corner and meets the back of a man dressed in all black, standing with his hand on the doorknob of some faculty member’s room.

Lance raises his blaster as if to shoot, making sure the sound of it charging is loud enough to be heard. It’s a threat, and they both know it. He sees the intruder’s shoulders tense under his dark clothing.

“Turn around slowly,” Lance says calmly. “And put your hands up.”

It’s silent in the hallway. The intruder follows the orders without saying anything, and Lance sees the doorknob he’d just let go of—half-melted down.

“Whose room are you trying to break into?” Lance asks. No answer. The man’s arms twitch, just the smallest movement towards his waist, and Lance raises his blaster on impulse, trained more efficiently on the man’s head. “Careful there, buddy. I’m a pretty good shot.”

_“Echo_ ,” Hunk comes in from Lance’s communicator, quiet enough not to wake any of the residents but loud enough for both Lance and the intruder to hear, “ _it’s been ten minutes, any news? Is everything okay? Over_.”

Lance keeps his eyes on the intruder as he presses the switch to speak. The intruder is wearing a mask and hood that effectively keep Lance from catching any distinct features, but despite the presence of two purple, glowing, pupil-less eyes on the mask, he gets the feeling that the stranger is watching him intently as Lance keeps his blaster trained steadily on him. He doesn’t budge as he answers Hunk.

“Echo to Carapace, I have the target. Bringing him into custody now. Over.”

_“Wait, seriously? Without back up?”_

Lance lets some pride seep into his voice. “No back up, just me. But dispatch someone to the faculty building entrance, I might need it in a moment.”

_“Understood. Be careful. Over_.”

“Right—”

His blaster is kicked out of his grasp before he can finish, the weapon flying across the hallway and skidding against the tile floor. He goes to dive for it, but the intruder has him pressed against the opposite wall before he can even take a step, a blade cold against Lance’s neck.

“Don’t move,” the intruder says, voice gruff and distorted by his mask.

Moonlight falls from the window and glints off the knife, pushed into Lance’s Adam’s apple hard enough that a bead of blood swells up when Lance swallows. He manages to say, “Wasn’t planning on it,” right before he lets out a soundwave from his palms that jerks the man away from him.

He slams into the opposite wall, landing on the ground with a rough _oof_ , but he’s up again in as much time as it takes Lance to dive for his blaster. Lance twists around in time to see the man charging, the knife in his hand glinting and sharp, and Lance shoots.

The shot misses, but only just barely. The stranger leaps to the side to avoid the hit, slamming his shoulder against the wall in the process. He sucks in a hissing breath through his mask.

“Let’s take this outside, yeah?” Lance says, scrambling to stand up and find his footing, his blaster pointed again at the man. “There’s not exactly a lot of room in here to fight, and I’d hate to wake any one of these hardworking teachers up, teenagers are a real pain in the ass to deal with as is without us interrupting their sleep—”

Apparently, the man doesn’t find his suggestion very appealing. He charges at Lance a second time.

Hunk crackles to life just as Lance shoots, and the man dives under the blast. _“Echo—”_

“Carapace, tell me that back up is here!”

Again the man is on him, reaching to knock the blaster out of Lance’s hands once more, but he manages to shoot again and force the man to duck out of the way. This close up, Lance is a much easier target for that blade, and he’s not particularly interested in becoming well acquainted with it any time soon. He needs to put distance between them, fast.

The man grunts behind his mask as Lance, his back on the ground from being tackled, pulls his knees up and kicks at the other’s chest. It pushes him back a few feet, but not enough; the intruder doesn’t relent, body slamming Lance into the ground hard enough to make his head spin.

His vision blurs from the impact, the world spinning wildly. His blaster leaves his hands, too. The pause is long enough for the man to jump to his feet and take off down the hall.

“Hey!” Lance gets up, but he only takes a few steps before he’s slumping against the wall, the room like a merry-go-round. “Get back here, asshole…”

_“I’m trying to send back up, but there was an explosion at the front of the campus we’re trying to deal with,”_ Hunk says. Lance had almost forgotten about him. _“Are you okay?”_

He smells burning, and then when he looks down the hallway, the man has disappeared. Probably into the room he’d tried to break into before Lance interrupted.

Shit—these are the dorms. The intruder has only ever taken information before, never lives, but Lance can’t be sure the rule will apply this time if he’s breaking into a _bedroom_.

“Fine,” he mumbles. “I haven’t lost him yet.” The world isn’t spinning anymore, but the stranger took his blaster.

He’ll just have to do without it.

Lance picks up into a run and gets to the room, the door flung open and the stranger standing over a desk, riffling through papers.

“Hey!”

He holds his hands out in front of him and sends a soundwave that knocks the stranger off his feet. The papers go flying from his hands, fluttering to the ground around him. Lance surveys the room as the stranger tries to regain his footing; it seems empty, the bed vacant.

No person, no murder. Thank God.

But then, what the hell is he trying to get?

There’s the sound of Lance’s blaster charging up. He ducks just in time for it to go off, hitting the wall behind him where his head would have been.

“What do you even want?” Lance asks as he ducks another time, sinking to all fours on the ground to avoid a second shot that leaves smoking marks on the door frame behind him. “It’s just a school. What the hell could be _here_ for you take?”

“Leave me alone,” the intruder demands. It’s the second thing he’s said all night. It strikes Lance as important.

_He’s stalling for time_ , Lance realizes. _He still hasn’t gotten what he came here for_. So Lance chooses to play along. He rises from the ground, using the bedpost as leverage to stand up, and approaches the stranger, daring to get as close as he can.

One foot, two feet, three. He takes another step across the room and the stranger still doesn’t shoot, despite the fully charged blaster held in one hand. The other is clutching something on the desk—a piece of paper maybe. Some kind of document he needs?

Without the sound of combat, it’s deathly quiet in the building, and there is so little distance between the two of them now as Lance continues to approach, steady as he creeps, a foot between them now. It’s a dangerous game; the closer he gets, the easier it is to get shanked, but it’s also easier for him to grab his blaster and knock the guy’s lights out.

He can see the rise and fall of the stranger’s chest. The sound of his breathing comes out twisted and mechanic through the voice distortion device hidden under his mask, filling the room’s silence with heavy breaths, a brief moment of peace.

“What do you need?” Lance asks, quiet this time, like he’s afraid of breaking the silence.

“None of your business.”

His voice— _does_ something to Lance. Makes him shiver, maybe. Surprises him. It’s not just the mask’s distortion; it’s the way the stranger says it. Desperately, emphatically. Almost like the sentence, which should by all means be dismissive and denying, is instead some kind of plea from the intruder.

There’s the sound of feet stomping up the stairwell and the smell of smoke crackling in the air, and the two of them are snapped out of their almost-conversation. In a moment, the stranger tosses the blaster as far away from Lance as he can, grabs something, and leaps over the desk to the window. He’s already flung the window open and jumped by the time Lance can even get to his blaster.

A moment too late, Allura and Pidge burst into the room, Allura with lightning already crackling at her fingertips and Pidge wielding her own stun blaster.

“Echo!” Allura rushes to him to check if he’s injured.

“I’m fine!” Lance scrambles to his feet and pushes past the two girls, ignoring Allura’s worried looks and apologizing on his way out the door.

“What are you doing?” Pidge calls after him.

As he runs down the staircase, he yells, “I’m not letting that bastard get away!”

\--

Keith doesn’t stop moving.

His feet pound against the ground, his legs twitching from the impact of his fall. He’d managed to dull the landing by slowing his descent, but it hadn’t completely nullified the pain of the impact, and it had cost him a few valuable seconds of running time. To make up for what he lost, he can’t afford to stop until he finds somewhere to hide or get to his bike, even if his ankles throb in protest.

He runs.

Around the faculty dorms, keeping close to the walls and making use of the dark, then around the administration building, and—there, diving behind a set of tables. There’s yelling behind him, a distinctly female voice calling after the man that had pursued Keith—the one who’d knocked him off his feet with…whatever it was he’d used. Keith doesn’t know. It was hard to see in the dark, even harder to process what happened when he was wrestling for a gun a moment later.

As he hides, waiting for the woman to pass, he regrets his decision to disregard the gun. He’d panicked at the prospect of two more superheroes joining the fight and done whatever he could to distract them and get out. The last time he’d tried to take on more than one super at a time, he’d barely made it out with his life, let alone with what he came for. It made more sense to cut his losses and run. But looking back on it now, a weapon other than his knife doesn’t sound too bad.

A shadow falls past him, the silhouette of a tall woman followed by the smell of smoke from moments before. He hopes she can’t see in the dark as he presses into to the underside of the picnic table, holding his breath.

“Astrabronte to Carapace,” she says into a device on her wrist, stopping a few feet away from Keith’s table. In her British accent, _care-a-pace_ becomes _caar-a-pace._ “Where did Echo go?”

_“Hold on,”_ a voice crackles, _“there was another explosion. I need to make sure Jewel is handling things on her end…”_

The woman keeps walking, heading somewhere to Keith’s right, and the voice over her device fades away as she leaves. He releases the breath he’d been holding and heads left.

His diversions worked (although the explosions went off a little later than he intended), because he doesn’t see anyone as he heads towards the street, his motorcycle parked behind a large tree across the road that slithers behind the gymnasium building. He doesn’t bother trying to mess with any of the cameras on his way out; now that he has what he came for, there’s no point in hiding as long as he can get away, and most of the monitors on the west side of the campus were dealt with when he snuck onto the perimeters the first time. With his ankle still throbbing, he keeps running.

It’s only a hundred yards now, give or take. Once he’s there, he just needs to get the cloaking ability going and he’s out—

“Hey, Snake Eyes!”

Keith barely registers the call before there’s a shock pulsing through the ground. It knocks him off his feet and slams him into the pavement, landing on his back, the wind knocked completely out of him. _Fuck._

The man from the faculty dorms swims into view over Keith’s writhing form, the gun from earlier held in his hand and pointed at Keith’s chest. A foot comes up to settle on his chest, pressing down just enough to keep him from getting up. Keith’s head spins as he tries to snatch air to breathe, but no matter how much he gasps, he can’t find it.

Echo leans down, his mask leaving the wide smile spreading across his lips in full view. He stops with his face at Keith’s, close enough to feel his breath. He smells like salt water somehow. The gun whirrs as it charges, preparing to go off, and Keith, with air finally returning to his lungs, starts to panic.

The gun won’t kill him—it’s just to stun, he knows that by now—but it’ll only take one shot to incapacitate him, and then he’ll be taken in by this douchebag who’s still grinning as he keeps the base of his boot on Keith’s rib cage. If he doesn’t do something, Keith’s actually gonna get caught this time. _Shit, shit, shit._

The man lifts his wrist to his mouth, using the same device the woman had.

“Echo to Vine, I’ve got the intruder near the Banes.”

_The Banes?_ Why does this guy know the name of the gymnasium? Did he memorize the buildings just for this mission?

Keith brings his hands up to the foot on his chest, aiming to grab his ankle and shove him off and away, but with the movement, Echo twitches and presses the gun a little closer into Keith’s face. It’s aimed at his cheek now, close enough that Keith would be knocked out with one shot for sure.

“Come on, man,” Echo says, amusement in his voice. Keith’s already catching on that this guy gets cocky when he thinks he’s got the upper hand. He must be new to the hero business. “Just give it up. Oh, and if you move for your knife I’ll shoot. I’m serious about that one.”

Keith _doesn’t_ move for his knife, but he doesn’t take his hands from Echo’s ankle either. He isn’t reprimanded for it, as the voice from Echo’s comms steals his attention away.

_“On our way,”_ the person says. It’s an androgynous voice this time, different from Carapace or the British woman from earlier. _“Keep an eye on him this time, Echo. We don’t need to lose him twice in one night. Over.”_

“Hey, I take offense to that! I kept a good eye on him before!”

“Not good enough,” Keith grunts.

Echo glances away from his wrist to look down at Keith, his eyebrows furrowing in annoyance at the comment. “I don’t know what _you’re_ actin’ all smug about, dude, you haven’t exactly gotten away.”

_Not yet_ , Keith thinks, before sending a wave of heat into his fingertips.

Echo’s eyes widen when he realizes what’s happening, but to his credit, he doesn’t immediately flinch away like Keith had expected him to. He stubbornly keeps his foot on Keith’s chest, but he can’t hide the clench in his jaw or the way his face contorts as the heat increases, searing through his boot and, after a moment of slow-burning, finally finding flesh.

“So that’s how you were melting all that stuff,” Echo grunts through gritted teeth. Keith’s never been this close up when burning someone before; it’s unsettling, feeling Echo’s skin writhe under his scalding fingertips. “Fire powers, huh?”

“Careful,” Keith says. “I could take your foot off.” And, because he’s petty, he can’t help but parrot, “I’m serious about that one.”

Maybe it’s the threat of amputation, or maybe the pain just gets too intense to bear; whichever it is, Echo reaches a breaking point and finally yanks his foot back, jerking away from Keith’s fire-slicked hands and stumbling on the road. He’s limping now, which Keith only feels marginally bad about. With one hand on his ankle as if to soothe the burn, he uses the other to aim his weapon at Keith. It’s lopsided at best.

“Is melting shit all you can do?” he asks and doesn’t pause for a response before shooting. Keith dodges it easily, avoiding it with only a step to the right. Echo’s arm is shaking.

“Hardly,” Keith can’t help but scoff. Now that he’s gotten up, he starts moving subtly back in the direction of his bike, his eyes kept on the man in front of him. He can still feel the flesh under his hands, squirming as it burned. “Is missing shots all _you_ can do?”  

Despite the pain, Echo smiles, cocky and grandiose. “Hardly.”

This time the wave doesn’t knock Keith off his feet; he sees as it’s about to happen, watches Echo flash open his free palm and push outwards towards Keith with all his strength, enough that Keith prepares himself for the shock and manages to stay upright. In the moment after the wave has subsided, Keith throws a streak of fire out from his hands, shooting in a slick line towards Echo. He just barely dives out of the way of the heat, hissing _ow_ ’s and _fuck_ as the fire sears past him.

“That one actually kinda hurt!” Echo complains. Keith takes off running across the street.

His bike is only a hundred feet away from him. If Echo chases him on foot, he doesn’t know; all he gets is the sound of the gun going off behind him, then shots whizzing past his shoulder and into the tree above his motorcycle. He ducks as a branch falls, narrowly avoids getting crushed, and slings himself onto his bike.

More shots ring out at him. He revs the engine and flips the switch for camouflage as another one hits the side of his motorcycle. He wonders what Echo must see: Keith’s bike jerk from the impact and then disappear into nothing.

He takes off the way he came, never once looking back.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A.L.T.E.A. discusses recent events. Keith tries to get some sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i actlly had this mostly done for the past almost two weeks but i was in arizona meeting my amazing beautiful friends (one of which is transryou on here) for the first time ever! so i apologize for the Late update when i said id have a schedule lmfao. i think its probably gonna be a once a week situation, on fridays (or saturday mornings, depending. who knows!)

Lance winces as he dips his ankle into a basin of water.

“Stupid asshole,” he mutters to himself. After a moment of getting used to it, the water feels good on his skin. He’d been running it under cold water since he got back to the base, but after ten minutes of sitting on the kitchen counter with his foot in the sink, he just decided to fill up a bowl.

From where she sits on the couch, Pidge rolls her eyes. She’s fiddling with a device in her lap that looks vaguely like a clock, screwing and unscrewing something Lance doesn’t know the name of. She bounces her knee as she works, a nervous twitch.

“’Stupid asshole’ that you let get away twice?” she says.

Lance opens his mouth to snap a response—a reply like, _it’s not my fault_ or _we’re a team for a reason_ or _cut me some slack, I just got a pretty bad burn from a glorified burglar, can’t you show a guy some sympathy?_ —but…he stops, closing his mouth slowly. A gross feeling bubbles in his stomach, not unlike what he’d felt as he watched the intruder dodge every one of his poorly-aimed shots and successfully disappear into the desert without a trace. Two failures, back to back, in one night. In one hour, even.

Lance didn’t even put up much of a fight.

“Sorry,” he says, and looks down at his ankle. He wiggles his toes in the basin, watching the water ripple around him. He doesn’t know what excuse he’ll come up with when his mom inevitably asks about his new gnarly, albeit temporary, limp. On the ground next to the basin is his destroyed boot, the material where his ankle had been cut away. It had melted onto his skin, but soaking it in water had forced the material, as well as his pant leg underneath it, off the wound, and he just took some scissors to it after that. He’ll need to get some new shoes.

Lance isn’t looking at her, but he hears Pidge sigh deeply, and he knows she’s pinching in her eyebrows and twisting around a screw and still bouncing her leg, maybe with more urgency now.

“No,” she says, quietly, because she’s always been bad at admitting when she’s wrong, even as she does it. “It’s…I’m sorry. This isn’t just on you. I should’ve gotten there sooner.”

“Hey man, ‘s not your fault you were needed somewhere else.”

It was only in the aftermath that Lance found out the reason Pidge hadn’t shown up in time was because of the explosions on the other side of campus. No one had been injured, but they had found a third explosive that never went off. Maybe it had broken accidentally, or maybe the intruder had purposefully thrown in a dud so they would spend time trying to stop its detonation instead of stopping _him_. Whatever it was, it had required Pidge and Hunk’s attention as the only team members on site with the expertise to deal with it.

“Maybe not,” she agrees. “But I guess it’s not _your_ fault he’s crazy and was gonna burn your leg off.”

“Just the foot,” Lance corrects.

“Like that matters?”

“It’s a pretty big distinction, you know, in terms of what kind of prosthetic I’d have to get, and how much boot was stuck to my skin,” he says, looking up in time to see her raise one pointed eyebrow at him. He shrugs. “But anyway, I doubt he was actually gonna go through with it.”

“What makes you say that?”

“A guy like that, who could’ve just slit my throat when he had me cornered the first time? He might’ve tried something more if backup had been there and he was outnumbered with no other options, but I think he was mostly just trying to scare me.”

She sets her gadget down on the cushion next to her and leans back into the couch, crossing her skinny arms over her chest. “So you were just playing a game of superhero chicken with the intruder?”

“Yeah, and I would’ve won if he hadn’t—”

“Burned your foot up?”

He shrugs a second time like it’s no big deal. At least, he doesn’t want to _make_ it a big deal. Burning his ankle isn’t on his list of Fun And Enjoyable Things; it hurt like hell in the moment, and it’s only continued to hurt as the night’s gone by, the only thing able to dull its sting being a constant dip in cold water, not the mention his ruined shoe and pant leg. The one good thing about the injury is that it meant he and Pidge were allowed to head back to the base early after the fight so he could have help treating the wound, instead of sitting around and talking with the police.

But even still, he doesn’t want to make it a big thing. They’ve all had a stressful night, so there’s no real reason to whine about it or make a show of a relatively minor injury. His ankle will heal, he’ll get new clothes, and he’ll be able to get back out there again soon. It’s not anything that serious.

Not to mention it wasn’t anyone’s fault but his own that he ended up in that situation in the first place. He should’ve been more careful about close contact, especially when he already knew about that guy’s thing with knives. It was just—well, in the moment, he hadn’t expected the intruder to have powers, you know? None of the other reports about him had given any specifics, and superpowers, while much more common in the past few decades than ever before in history, are still only possessed by a minority of the population. The possibility of their school burglar having some of his own didn’t cross Lance’s mind.

Last time he makes _that_ mistake.

“I prefer to think of it as lightly charred,” he says.

Pidge smiles, just a small thing. “Gently roasted?”

“Casually singed.”

“Moderately carbonized.”

“Well-cooked.”

She snorts a laugh at that one. “You seem to be feeling better at least.”

“Yeah, at least. What about you?”

“What _about_ me?”

“He got away.” Lance leans back in his chair so he’s resting on his palms, making sure to keep his foot fully submerged in the washbowl as he does. It doesn’t hurt so bad as long as he doesn’t jerk it around. “There was one of him and five of us. Hell, we even had _Allura_ on site to help. Aren’t you…” _upset?_ he wants to say. He lands on, “Disappointed?”

She frowns. “I mean, none of us _like_ letting the bad guys get away. Our job hinges on us not doing that, actually, so of course I’m disappointed when we fail our objective. It’s…”

Lance provides, “Humiliating?”

“You could put it that way.”

“I know what you mean. Especially when we were just watching over a school…” Leaning back on his palms, he looks up at the ceiling. All the rooms at headquarters have huge ceilings, easily twice as tall as a normal building’s. Allura’s family must have been pretty adamant about ornate architecture and decoration when they were constructing it. “”S not like anyone at the Garrison knew that it was us, but it still would’ve been nice to be able to say we caught him.”

Pidge uncrosses her arms. “I’d like to have a conversation with him.”

Lance thinks about the brief one he had with the guy, or almost had.

_Leave me alone._

_None of your business_.

He thinks about the moment in the dorm room, right before Allura and Pidge showed up. When neither of them moved, and it was quiet for a second. In the moment, Lance thought…

But, no. It doesn’t matter what Lance thought about it, or how he reacted. Within minutes, the stranger was mocking him and threatening to take his foot off. Clearly it was only Lance who had…

Whatever. He can’t dwell on it.

“You wouldn’t,” Lance says. “Trust me. He’s not a great conversationalist. And he sounds like Darth Vader.”

She laughs, startled. “What?”

“His mask! It had some kinda voice distortion thing going on, but he just sounded like Darth Vader! Or Batman. It was pretty annoying to listen to.”

“I’m surprised you managed to take him seriously like that.”

“Me too.”

The conversation fizzles out, and the two of them lay around in the living quarters for the next few minutes. Pidge returns to her project while Lance only sits in the silence, his ankle still cooling down in the washbowl, until Allura, Hunk, and Shay return from the Garrison, all looking like slightly different definitions of the word “fatigued.”

Allura is the worst off. She strides through the foyer into their living quarters with a heaviness in her shoulders that means she’s had a long day. She takes off her helmet with a huff, her vibrant white hair plastered to her head from hours of confinement. Her costume is meant to cover every part of her skin that shows any of her vitiligo in an attempt to keep her identity as tightly under wraps as possible, but because the skin condition affects her arms and hands, as well as leaving two identical marks on her cheekbones, it means there’s almost no skin uncovered by the yellow and white fabric of her disguise. Lance is sure the blue cape around her shoulder, although a nice homage to her late superhero father, does her no favors in terms of the heat, either.

“I need a break,” she groans, tossing her helmet halfheartedly to the side and sinking into the couch next to Pidge. She flops over, using Pidge’s shoulder as a rest.

Shay takes the spot on the other side of Pidge, holding her own, much less ornate helmet in her lap, and Hunk sits in the chair next to Lance. Neither of them looks too great, either. Hunk peels his mask off, holding it in his hands, and leans his head back on his chair.

“We all do,” Pidge agrees. Surprisingly, she doesn’t shove Allura off of her. In the past few weeks, Pidge has been more and more receptive to touch from the rest of the squadron in a way she never would have been six months ago. Although, the fact that it’s probably harder to move when Allura is all but falling asleep where she sits might have some influence in this case. “How was dealing with the cops?”

From her space next to Pidge, Shay answers, “The same as always.”

“I wish I could’ve come back to the base with you guys,” Hunk says. To Lance, he asks, “How’s your ankle doing, man?”

“Oh, you know how it is.” Lance takes his foot out of the basin as if to show Hunk, but it only makes the burning worse. He lowers his foot again, hiding a wince. “I’ll live.”

“I got aloe vera and gauze for you, you want my help wrapping it?”

“Yes _please_.”

Hunk gets up, presumably to go retrieve the supplies, and disappears through the doorway. Coran comes in after Hunk, holding what looks like a folded-up pair of pants.

“Hey,” Lance says, and Coran tosses the pants to him. He catches them easily. “Oh dunk, these are for me?”

Coran is Allura’s second in command. He has a head of shockingly orange hair, a mustache that could make anyone jealous, and a go-get-em attitude that Lance can appreciate, and he knows the rest of the squadron appreciates it too, even if they don’t always verbalize it. As the man behind the curtain, Coran helps strategize, hooks them up with a good portion of their jobs, and takes care of any costume, identity, paperwork, or press oriented issues.

However, since he’s powerless, he spends most of his time away from the actual fighting; when he worked with Allura’s father, he ended up seriously wounded on more than one occasion just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. His lack of powers and close connection to the heroes of A.L.T.E.A. make him an easy target for villains, so keeping him out of the public eye is just another safety precaution.

“I thought you might appreciate them,” he says, a laugh obvious in his voice, “instead of having to sit around with your backside out.”

It had seemed easier to Lance at the time to take his ruined pants off instead of wearing them, and when he got back to the base he was still exhausted and sweaty and hot all over from the fight, so being a little less clothed hadn’t sounded like a horrible idea. Since then, he’d almost forgotten he wasn’t technically clothed. He glances between the pants Coran offered him and his bare legs.

“You’re telling me everyone doesn’t like seeing me in my underwear? With legs like _these_?” He lifts the uninjured one as high as he can get it (which is pretty far, if he does say so himself) to demonstrate, pointing his toe like a dancer. “Pssh, come on, man, you can’t deprive them of this sight.”

“It’s not depriving anyone,” Pidge mumbles. She looks like she’s falling asleep too.

“Liar.”

“Your current audience is a lesbian, a girl in a relationship with your best friend, and Coran,” Allura says from her spot on Pidge’s shoulder, her eyes still closed. Next to her, Shay makes a face as if in agreement.

Lance flexes his foot, then points his toes again. “Then what does that make you?”

“Half-asleep,” Allura mumbles.

Coran laughs from his place still in the doorway. Hunk returns with gauze and a bottle of aloe vera gel, excusing himself past Coran. “What’re we talking about?”

“Oh, thank God, someone who can actually appreciate me.” Lance finally puts his leg down and reaches his arms out as Hunk approaches, as if inviting him for a hug. “Hunk, buddy, my man, my guy, my dude, my bro, my best friend, my almost-lover—”

“ _Please_ don’t say it like that,” Pidge interjects.

“We almost dated once, what else do you want me to call it?”

“Maybe don’t bring that up in front of my girlfriend,” Hunk agrees, sitting back down in the chair next to Lance. “Anyway, what did you want? Also, lift up your ankle.” He angles his chair so he’s facing the basin, gesturing towards his lap.

“Do you think my legs are attractive?” Lance asks, slowly lifting his ankle from the washbowl and placing it in Hunk’s lap. He drips water onto Hunk’s pants, but Hunk doesn’t seem to mind.

“Um,” Hunk says. “I guess? Why?”

Pidge fills in, “Lance is throwing a fit because no one in this room is attracted to him.”

“By that she means Coran gave him a spare pair of pants to put on,” Shay corrects.

“Oh,” Hunk says, like that accurately explains anything. He applies aloe vera to Lance’s ankle without warning, and Lance tries to hide the way he flinches at the unexpected contact. The burn hurts a lot less now that he’s had it in cool water for so long, but it’s still sensitive. Hunk wraps the gauze around Lance’s ankle, making sure it’s tight.

“Thanks, buddy.” Lance smiles.

“Any time, man.”

Hunk stands up to join Shay on the couch, settling in at her side, and she immediately wraps an arm around his waist, pulling him close. All the couches at the base are pretty large, chosen with the intent of holding a _lot_ of people at one time, which Lance can’t say he minds. It’s nice that all five of them can fit together if they want to.

Allura finally peels her head off of Pidge’s shoulder, blinking her eyes open. She looks like she needs to sleep for a good twelve hours, but she holds her shoulders back and forces herself awake.

“Unrelated to Lance’s ego,” she says, “I think we should talk about the elephant in the room.”

“Which one?” Pidge mutters.

Coran asks, a frown in place, “Allura, would you like me to go make some coffee?”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that—”

“Nonsense, you’re about to fall asleep where you sit! I’ll be right back.” He leaves the room, ignoring Allura’s protests that follow him.

She gives up trying to stop him and leans back into the couch, her white hair frizzy and tangled. She told Lance once that the reason her hair was so naturally white had to do with her powers—controlling lightning. Her father was the same way. She took after him in more than those respects, though; Lance didn’t know Allura until after her father, a world-renowned superhero who went by the alias Zeus, had already passed, but from the accounts Lance has heard, he knows the man was compassionate, a born leader, and strong in every sense of the word.

He can see that in Allura as she struggles to stay awake for their briefing. It’s almost two A.M. now.

Once Coran returns with coffee for everyone (“We might be here a while; there was no harm in making a few extra cups!”), they all settle in to actually discuss the events of the night, with Coran taking the seat next to Lance. Lance assumes they’ve already gone over the basics, since they had to retell the events to the police, but the finer details—the what ifs and mistakes of the night and things like that, those have gone mostly untouched. Well, out loud at least. Lance doesn’t know about anything else, but he’s basically only been thinking about what happened since he got back to HQ.

“I think it’s fair to say that we made some…mistakes,” Allura says, tapping her thumb on the lip of her coffee mug. She seems to be saying it only for Lance’s benefit when she adds, “ _All_ of us have things that we could have…well, frankly, done better. We were off our game tonight, I would venture to say.”

“We’ve definitely handled worse with less trouble,” Shay agrees.

“What I don’t get,” Lance starts, “is how he got past the cameras so easily. I mean, I know he melted them, but there had to be a point where he got up _to_ the cameras to be able to do that, so how did we miss that?”

Hunk shifts, swinging his arm over the back of the couch and around Shay, his other hand holding his coffee cup. The two of them look cozy like that, with Shay automatically moving to lean against him.

“There _are_ some blind spots in the campus’s security, although it’s only a few. It’s unlikely, but…” Hunk’s eyebrows crease. “In theory, if someone knew the campus well enough, they could use those to their advantage. Someone who knows their way around could travel only in the blind spots, at least until they got up under the cameras.”

“Or he could have been using something to conceal himself,” Pidge jumps in.

“You think that guy could have access to technology that expensive?”

She shrugs. “I think the chances that he does are about the same as the chances that he was a student or teacher at the Garrison at one point.”

Everyone’s silent for a moment. Lance absorbs that possibility, frowning. “So we’re assuming he’s someone affiliated with the school.”

“Not necessarily,” Allura says. “We can’t rule anything else out, or know anything for sure quite yet. There’s still too little to go off of…Although, I do agree it would make sense if he were someone previously involved with the Garrison. At the very least, it would more easily explain why he was breaking into the living quarters.”

“That still doesn’t explain what he possibly could have needed from a _school_ ,” Lance says.

“No…Unfortunately, we likely won’t find that out at all until we catch this man for good and get information from him directly.”

“So we _are_ going after him again?”

“Of course we are. This is the third place he’s hit, and he still hasn’t been caught; I imagine we’re only going to keep running into trouble with this one.”

“Awesome,” Hunk mumbles. “We get to run into the scary guy with hot hands again.”

From next to him, Shay perks up slightly. “While we’re discussing theories,” she says, “can I ask what we think about the alarms not going off?”

“The guy probably tampered with them,” Pidge says.

Lance offers, “Or the school did it.”

“Why would the school do it?”

“I don’t know, but I wouldn’t put it past them.”

She rolls her eyes, although it’s not malicious. She’s probably too tired to be genuinely irritated with anyone right now.

Hunk frowns. “All this to steal something from an empty room…Must have been something pretty valuable.”

“Or important to him,” Shay suggests.

“Okay, okay, we have _got_ to come up with something to call this guy.” Lance waves his arms in front of him as if to wipe away what they’ve said, sitting forward in his chair. “This is getting ridiculous, we can’t just keep saying ‘him’ and ‘the guy’ and whatever. He needs a name! A good, solid, code name.”

“You want to give our intruder a supervillain name,” Pidge says slowly, like she can’t believe what he’s saying.

“Not a _supervillain_ name. Just a code name. Like what we have for each other.”

“So a supervillain name.”

“Aww, c’mon, Pidge, don’t be a buzzkill. What about…’The Assassin’?”

The members of A.L.T.E.A. look between each other, each with varying levels of displeasure at the suggestion.

Lance tries again, “Okay, then what about…’The _Dark_ Assassin’?”

Even Allura grimaces behind her mug.

“Was he particularly assassin-like?” Coran asks. “From what I heard, ‘The Dark Thief’ might be more appropriate.”

“Please don’t encourage him, Coran,” Pidge sighs.

“No, no, feel free, my guy! I am liking this suggestion. What about…’The Flaming Ninja’?”

“You _have_ to know that that one’s bad.”

Lance pouts at Pidge, crossing his arms over his chest. “Okay, smartass, why don’t you come up with some if you’re so good at it?”

“I don’t need to,” she insists. “We all know who we’re talking about, a code name isn’t required.”

“What about ‘Blade’?” Hunk offers. He’s had his face scrunched up in contemplation for the past interactions, presumably to come up with that suggestion. Lance snaps and points at him emphatically.

“Yes! That one is good! So far for leading contenders, we have ‘Dark Thief’ and ‘Blade’—although I’d say ‘Assassin’ was pretty close behind,” he adds. “Anyone else wanna join in on this? We can make it a competition.”

“We are not making it a competition,” Allura says. “…And…I think if we’re talking about names, something more directly related to his powers would—”

“Yes! Allura’s in, this is official now.”

She tries to hide her smile behind her cup, but she doesn’t duck her head down quick enough to keep Lance from noticing. He smiles, too. He likes this—when they’re all joking around and acting a little less like heroes who put their lives on the line on a daily basis and a little more like the teenagers they are.

Especially Allura. She’s always had big shoes to fill and quite a lot of responsibility resting on her shoulders, but ever since her father passed away six months ago and she got A.L.T.E.A. off the ground, she’s been forced more and more to be the adult. She’s Lance’s age, just barely eighteen, and yet he rarely finds her goofing off with Hunk and Pidge and him or going out to parties or staying up late just for the hell of it. Circumstances have forced her to grow up too quickly. Seeing her briefly accept that she’s still eighteen, just barely into adulthood and in many ways still a child, makes Lance’s chest a little warm, a little less heavy for her. He’s happy because of it.

Plus, it’s no downside that she also happens to be very, very beautiful and very, very easy to fall in love with. Not that Lance is in love with her—only that he thinks he could be. But that’s just a pipe dream.

He tries not to think about it.

Lance takes a sip of his coffee. It’s almost cold by now. “Okay, so more related to his powers. What about…’Razor Blaze’?”

Hunk laughs. “Dude, what is that supposed to be?”

“Like razor blade—since he’s the knife guy—but also ‘blaze’ because he’s the fire guy! Don’t laugh, you know it’s perfect.”

“Just ‘Blade’ was better,” Pidge says.

“I thought you weren’t getting involved.”

“I said I wasn’t gonna come up with any myself,” she corrects. “I never said I wouldn’t razz you for your suggestions.”

“Rude!”

“It’s not my fault you make it easy.”

“I think that’s enough code name discussion for today,” Allura intervenes. She glances at the communicator on her wrist, telling the time. “Or night, rather. It might be best at this point if we all get some sleep and reconvene in the morning. I doubt we’ll be allowed much rest before we’re wanted to discuss the break-in, anyhow.”

“Until _you’re_ wanted,” Pidge corrects. “The rest of us get to sleep in.”

Allura’s shoulders drop in a silent sigh as if admitting to that point. “Yes, I suppose so. Being A.L.T.E.A.’s spokesperson does have its disadvantages sometimes, I’d say.”

Lance isn’t sure whether or not she’s joking when she says that. Of course they all know it has disadvantages; she didn’t even take this position until her father died.

But she gets a little more like this at night, Lance has found. Her filter and desire to tiptoe around topics for fear of making others uncomfortable tends to decrease as her need for sleep increases. He doesn’t blame her for it. Sometimes he prefers this, actually. She deserves to talk or joke about things if it helps her, regardless of if everyone else quite knows yet how to handle it. Lance can’t say he’s ever dealt with grief this heavy, but he doesn’t want Allura to have to censor herself just for their sake.

He can’t imagine losing a parent like that.

“You’re probably right,” Lance says, stretching his arms over his head.

Still tucked against Hunk, Shay says around a yawn, “Sleep doesn’t sound too bad to me.”

Satisfied that her suggestion has been agreed upon, Allura stands up, holding her coffee mug in one hand and running her other through her tangled hair. “You may all sleep here tonight if you don’t want to bother with the trip home. I understand it’s a little late to be out on the road.”

Hunk looks to Lance. “Do you wanna try to get back to the apartment, or…?”

Lance shakes his head. “Nah, you can go ahead. I think I’d rather just…crash here for the night, ya know?”

“I don’t blame you,” Pidge says. “Allura, you have any extra clothes?”

“Plenty. Let me see if there’s anything suitable for you two to sleep in.” Allura smiles and heads out the door.

Hunk and Shay leave ten minutes later. They’re probably headed back to Lance and Hunk’s apartment; Shay basically lives there these days anyway, not that Lance minds. She’s unbelievably sweet, and she’s always willing to join in on teasing Hunk, and she makes Hunk really, _really_ happy, so of course Lance can’t help but like her. She’s pretty good company when Hunk is stuck late at a lab or distracted by a project, too. It helps that she’s in on this superhero thing. Means he doesn’t have to worry so much about hiding.  

Pidge, Coran, Allura, and Lance stay at the base for the night. The building, more like a castle with its impressive height and elegance, is built to house a good deal of company, constructed with the intention of hosting superheroes from all over the globe. Lance wouldn’t say that the members of A.L.T.E.A. are from all over the _globe_ —other than the founders, Lance is the only one born and raised anywhere other than Arizona—but the team is still growing. They’ve just hardly gotten off the ground, after all.

Regardless, there are plenty of spare rooms for Lance and Pidge to stay the night in. Lance doesn’t want to admit it, but he’s still in enough pain that the idea of having to travel back to the apartment and climb all the way to the third floor (because of course their building’s elevator is broken) and then to his _room_ and then to _bed_ is…inconvenient at best, daunting at worst. Instead, Coran helps him hobble to one of the guest rooms, calling, “Let me know if you need anything!” on his way out.

Lance, for all that has happened today, falls asleep the moment his head hits the pillow.

\--

_“…the park’s building is set to begin early December this year, and it’s estimated completion is in 2020.”_

Keith rolls over on the couch, groaning as he awakes slowly back to consciousness. He blinks his eyes open, met by the light of morning through the window and the ceiling above him. The soft voice of the newscaster isn’t the worst noise to wake up to. Static filters through every now and then. His house—if one could call it that—doesn’t get the best reception, being located in what one could consider the middle of nowhere.

His whole body aches as he sits up. He doesn’t know exactly what time he fell asleep this morning, but when he checks his phone and finds it to be barely six, he figures it couldn’t have been long.

It was nearing one A.M. when he finally got home this morning, the whole world seemingly asleep. No cars followed him as he got away; he doesn’t even remember seeing another person on the road in the forty minutes it took him to get back home. He should have been grateful for this—it definitely made _his_ life easier if he wasn’t pursued—but he couldn’t help but feel unsettled by it instead.

There was something…off about his mission this morning. He wasn’t sure yet what it was, but it kept him up longer than he wanted it to. Most nights, whether he’s out late working or successfully completing a mission, he crashes on the couch in his two-room “house” and passes out the moment his head hits the cushion. He wakes hours later, often having been too tired to even change into his pajamas, and starts the cycle over again.

Not last night.

He got home and laid down, every muscle in his body screaming for him to rest and just _go to sleep already_. He was sweaty. Tired. In pain from being slammed around, his chest hurting from the weight of a foot pressing into him. He closed his eyes and waited for sleep to find him, but it felt like hours before the adrenaline stopped coursing through his body and his mind slowed down enough to let him finally find rest.

For what could have been hours afterwards, his fingertips still tingled, his hands shaking as if waiting for another target to find, and every time he closed his eyes, he couldn’t stop thinking about the people he’d dealt with tonight—or, rather, the person.

This wasn’t the first time he’d had people try to stop him, and it certainly won’t be the last until he’s finished. But there was something different about tonight. Maybe it was because that guy—Echo—he was so willing to let himself get hurt if it meant bringing Keith in. Of course, he _should_ have been willing to sacrifice something for that cause, seeing as he’s a superhero and that’s at least a little in the job description, but Keith had only ever _actually_ seen one other hero that willing to take very avoidable, very serious pain. Most heroes, especially ones who are just beginning like he assumes Echo is, still have some of that deeply ingrained self-preservation that makes it so easy for them to back down or let the bad guy get away if it means saving themselves some pain. Others do it on purpose—caring more about themselves in the moment than the people they’re supposed to be protecting, but still desiring the fame and fortune that can come from being a superhero.

Echo had hardly flinched.

Keith wonders how much more Echo would have put up with in the name of capturing Keith, had it come down to it. What he would have done if Keith had broken his hand so he couldn’t use his powers, or his arms, or if Keith had intentionally aimed a blast of fire at his face.

He wonders why Echo didn’t shoot him in the hallway the first time they met. Why he didn’t just blast Keith when his back was turned and stun him then and there.

Maybe it was an ego thing. Maybe he liked the thrill of trying to talk to the criminals he brought in, or maybe he wanted to be able to say that he did it without resulting to brute force.

Maybe it wasn’t anything but stupidity.

Keith didn’t know. That kept him awake.

_What do you want?_

_What do you need?_

It’s stupid, but as he laid there, Keith kept thinking about the face Echo made when he realized what Keith was planning to do. The momentary wide-eyed fear, there for only a split second before it was schooled into creased eyebrows and a determined frown. The gritted teeth as the heat increased, becoming more and more unbearable with every passing second. It must have left a nasty burn. Keith wonders how bad it was—he doesn’t think it got to be any worse than maybe a second degree burn at most, but he’s been wrong before.

He isn’t yet used to hurting people.

Is Echo used to it?

Outside the one window in his home, the sun has almost completely risen over the desert skyline. The world is purple burning into red. The radio crackles as the newscaster finishes one story and begins on another.

_“—In recent news, the Gila Bend Garrison was broken into last night,”_ the woman says. Keith gets up from the couch, turning the radio’s volume up on his way to the fridge.

_“Witnesses say that the building was infiltrated at around twelve-thirty A.M. despite the presence of superhero league A.L.T.E.A. on the scene. Due to the recent break-ins of government buildings around Arizona, the Gila Bend Garrison set up precautions in case this criminal were to target them. Little is known about the criminal, and information about the item or items stolen has yet to be released to the public.”_

Keith goes about scrambling an egg as he listens to the radio detail his own robbery, rummaging around for clean dishes because he hasn’t had time to do them in the past few days. There’s something unsettling to Keith about hearing others talk about him, especially when they don’t know he’s listening. He’s always hated it. His whole life, it’s only left him feeling out of his body. But he’s been forced to get used to it in the past few months. Now it only brings a sigh to his lips.

The clock tells him it’s nearing six-thirty. He slips his scrambled egg onto a paper plate, flips the stove off, and settles back on the couch with his breakfast. His shift at work doesn’t start until noon; maybe after he eats he can get some more sleep, his own thoughts willing.  

_“…hero Astrabronte with us today to discuss the recent string of robberies. Astrabronte, it’s so nice to have you here with us this morning.”_

_“Of course,”_ the British girl from this morning says. _“I’m happy to be here.”_

Keith sighs, shoves another piece of egg into his mouth, and flips the radio off.

Running on four hours of sleep it is, then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in other news, who else is excited as fuck for the new season now that we've had sdcc?


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Keith.”
> 
> “What?” He sets his fork down. The noise it makes against his plate is loud. “What do you _want_ me to say, Adam?”
> 
> Adam looks at him. He doesn’t speak. Just…looks.
> 
> \--
> 
> Lance begrudgingly meets with a rich boy. Keith gets in his head again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a day late but we all make mistakes akgjakfd
> 
> also i think saturdays work better than fridays just in terms of, the times i have free to write. 
> 
> happy late birthday to lance the worlds most beautiful boy!! i love him and im sad i didnt write anything in time but :0 ah well.

Lance has decided that he hates having to use public transportation.

He comes to this conclusion as he’s speed-walking his way from his mother’s house to the nearest bus stop, a grocery bag full of leftovers from dinner in his left hand and a half-open umbrella in his right. Of course it just happens to storm the day that he was going out while his car is in the shop being worked on, and of course his umbrella _just happens_ to break as he’s rushing out the door to make it to the next bus in, like, three minutes, by now. He struggles to get it open, holding the half-closed umbrella out in front of him as he futilely wiggles the runner up the handle. It gets stuck in the middle.

“Fuck it,” he mumbles, and runs to the bus stop with the umbrella only half open.

This is probably also a little bit his own fault for not bothering to check the forecast before he left his parents’ house. It’s not like it’s even been that great of weather recently—it’s just that, well, _usually_ it’s fine, so much so that he’d forgotten that the normal weather has been replaced by thunderstorms and flood-worthy rain for a week straight. He pays for his hubris as he runs the final block to the bus stop, swerving to stand under the awning as quickly as possible. A few high school age teenagers stand with each other, and he ignores the way they eye him as he closes the umbrella and shakes the rainwater from it.

The bus turns the corner a few seconds later. He boards with a heavy, relieved sigh.

When he came over for dinner tonight, his family had been more than happy to see him, as they always are when he drops by, for dinner or otherwise. He’s not the first child to leave the house for college, but it hasn’t gotten easier for the younger siblings still at home and all the many nieces and nephews to go without his dazzling presence and Monopoly expertise. The feeling is mutual, though; if there’s one thing he doesn’t like about living away from home, it’s that it’s _away_ from home.

That was the only way Lance had really, genuinely differed from his peers growing up; he’d never resented his family, never truly found them embarrassing, never wanted or needed to get away from them, ever. He’d only ever found love and acceptance and open arms with his parents, his siblings, despite their occasional disagreements. He even had a good relationship with most of his extended family, family drama set aside. It’s been kind of…lonely, living only with Hunk.

But the once-a-week (or, as close to once a week as he can get with his spontaneous schedule) dinners help a lot. They keep him from getting too overwhelmed with all the changes going on—college, being away, A.L.T.E.A., _Echo_. It’s a nice hour or two every week to return to the way things used to be. He leaves his worries at the doorstep, slipping them off like shoes and falling back into the familiar pattern of good-natured banter with his siblings. For a little while, he doesn’t have to think about the essay he has due this Friday or the still ongoing look for their thief or anything else but the food on the stove and his younger brother’s most recent school play.

That was part of why he’d been so… _upset_ that the first thing his mother asked him about was his limp. It’s not that he hadn’t expected her to bring it up—after all, it’s new and very present, and of course she’d be worried, she’s his _mom_ and he’s visibly hurt. But he doesn’t like having to lie to her about things like this. It makes him too aware that she’s not a part of that facet of himself, that she can’t know about his hero work. It…makes him antsy.

In the moment, he’d been so thrown off that he almost forgot the lie he had prepared for her. But she’d noticed his hesitance, and to make up for it, he waved her off, saying, “Hunk dropped the coffee table on my foot while we were moving it, it’ll be fine soon,” and swooping down to kiss her forehead on his way over to the stove, where he swiped a sample to distract her. It worked; her attention was stolen away to his criminal act, and she reprimanded him lightly before shooing him out of the kitchen, telling him to go get his siblings and forgetting to press him for details.

He’d still felt guilty about his lie, though.

On the bright side, as he climbs onto the mostly crowded bus and finds a rail to claim as his own, his ankle _has_ started to feel a little better. Or, at least, he’s been managing it more. It hasn’t kept him from his work as Echo thankfully, and with some painkillers, the burn is pretty nonexistent in his day-to-day. It’s only when the Ibuprofen starts to wear off that he limps or that it becomes an issue again.

Allura says it might leave a scar, or at least some kind of reddened pigment behind. When he rolls his pants leg up, he finds the shape of a hand wrapped around the skin there.

That’s the only part he minds so much.

Lance hadn’t realized just how unsettling it would be to have the shape of someone else’s body scarred onto you. Maybe it shouldn’t be unsettling—maybe it should just make him want to go after this guy more, or make him hate him, or, or, or _something_ —but all it does is cause him to shiver, every time he sees it.  

It’s been a week today since their run in. He still wants to catch their thief, but he would’ve wanted that regardless.

The bus is pretty full today, but Lance keeps to himself during the fifteen minutes it takes to get downtown, staring down at his phone as he scrolls through Twitter mindlessly. A small girl, maybe three or four, sits near Lance, babbling to her father. The teenagers from the bus stop stand as close to each other as they can, avoiding touching anyone else. To Lance’s right, a guy in the world’s most nondescript clothing stands with one hand in his pocket and the other on the rail, his posture suggesting boredom.

_Superhero Moon Shadow reported missing,_ one tweet reads, punctuated with a link to an article. It’s dated, time-stamped at seven A.M. this morning, and the article’s picture is a snapshot of the hero in question, posing for a photo with a man dressed in a suit. Probably a government official or something.

Lance’s thumb hovers over the tweet. He clicks the link.

> _Superhero Moon Shadow, one of the official protectors of Corpus Christi, Texas, has been confirmed missing, local police say._
> 
> _This news comes after a weeks-long spontaneous absence from the hero. Residents of Corpus Christi say that Moon Shadow was frequently active in the community. “She never failed to show up when we called,” local pastor Samuel Lee, 56, says. “She was always there when the city needed her.”_
> 
> _Around mid-September, she seemingly stopped responding to distress calls. Unaware of her civilian identity, no one in the city was able to contact her, until a source who has chosen to remain anonymous came forward with her identity as 23-year-old Lexi Shorden. Police checked her home but found nothing._
> 
> _Police say there is no evidence of this being a kidnapping, but that they have not ruled the possibility out either._

The article goes on to describe the last time she was seen in public and the reactions and theories of the other heroes stationed in the area, ending with a number to call if you have any information that might aid the investigation. He closes the tab, sighing. Nothing better to get his hopes up than to hear about how other people in his line of work are suddenly and inexplicably going missing.

One more stop until he needs to get off. The bus careens in a sharp left, Lance along with it. Not expecting the turn, he loses his balance, and the phone in his hand goes flying from him and skidding across the bus’s floor.

“Shi—oot!” he quickly corrects himself, glancing at the child within hearing distance. She doesn’t seem to pay him any mind.

The person to Lance’s right has, however, and when Lance turns back around to pick his phone up, the guy is already bent over retrieving it.

“Ah, thanks, man,” Lance says, but he stops when the stranger hands the phone over. He’s wearing a hoodie, hood up and everything, and a scarf around his neck that obscures a good portion of his face. Lance, from the brief glance, can just barely recognize that he’s seen this guy somewhere before.

School, maybe?

“No problem,” the guy says, already returning to his place before. Lance is left standing with his hand still up and holding his phone, like he’s expecting the guy to turn back around and strike up a conversation.

Lance wants to ask if maybe they went to high school together, or maybe they share a class right now—something—but the bus comes to a stop and the doors open with a groan. He stuffs his phone in his jacket pocket and shuffles off the bus, already struggling to open the umbrella again.

_Whatever,_ he shrugs. _It was probably nothing_.

\--

When Lance gets to headquarters, the mood is tense.

He could tell from the text Hunk sent him that things weren’t exactly… _okay_ , for lack of a better term. Hardly an hour after he’d gotten to their apartment, flopping down on the couch to rest and start on assignments despite the fact that he was still damp from running through the rain, his phone buzzed with an incoming text.

> _hey man, im at alluras. you should head over._
> 
> _she needs you here_
> 
> _oh and make sure to be changed already_

Lance had responded asking what exactly Hunk meant by “needing” him there, but Hunk said he shouldn’t say over text and that Lance would just have to find out himself when he gets there, but he’d emphasized the importance of already being in his hero costume. So at around seven P.M., Lance hauled himself back off the couch, slipped his shoes on again, and left, remembering to grab their spare umbrella—the only one still working—on his way out.

Yet another bus ride and trek through the rain (ugh) and he’s at Allura’s. Only Hunk is there with Allura and Coran. Both Pidge and Shay are absent, which is odd only because it means this isn’t a Whole Team Meeting, but he doesn’t ask them about it.

Mostly because, lounging on their headquarter’s couch, long legs crossed pristinely and a cup of tea in hand, is Lotor.

No wonder Hunk didn’t want to talk about it over text.

“Hey,” Lance mumbles to Hunk, sidling up next to him. He means to offer the greeting quiet enough to go unnoticed, but Lotor, who had been in what could have passed as a pleasant conversation with Allura and Coran, turns to Lance at the doorway, his presence not overlooked. Allura’s sentence trails off, and both her and Coran look to the doorway.

A thin smile spreads on Lotor’s lips. “Ah, Echo. So nice of you to join us finally.”

Lance had changed prior to coming as per Hunk’s instructions, stopping outside the building to slip into his costume, and God, is he glad he did. All of the core members of A.L.T.E.A. know each other’s civilian identities, either because they grew close enough to not mind the breach of privacy or because they knew each other prior to joining, but anyone else affiliated with them is a case-by-case basis.

Lotor is one case that Lance particularly dislikes.

Which—okay, so, maybe he shouldn’t dislike Lotor as blatantly or strongly as he does, but Lance just can’t help it! The guy is the one and only son of the villain who not only _killed Allura’s father,_ but who also started the coalition of super villains that swept the country and caused mass hysteria as well as the steady rise of distrust in superheroes. The coalition was mostly squashed after Lotor’s father died, but despite the league’s head figure and mastermind being dead and gone, the effects its decade-long run had on the political climate around heroism is still being felt and dealt with. Not to mention all the people that died as a result of the hysteria, civilians and heroes alike, and the smaller, less-organized-but-still-disconcerting copycat groups that have popped up over the years.  

So, sue Lance if he just can’t get behind trusting the son of maybe the most notorious supervillain known in the past century. Even if Lotor _was_ the one who finally defeated his father—even if he donated millions to A.L.T.E.A. to help its launch and future success, even if it _has_ been six months and he’s so far done nothing to bring about suspicion for his true intentions—Lance just can’t get it out of his mind that this guy is bad news.

On top of being the son of a famous supervillain, Lotor is a young, millionaire, heart-throb public figure with a fan base as enormous as his net worth. With his bleached, long hair, flawless skin, and annoyingly natural good looks, Lance begrudgingly admits that it’s no wonder he’s got close to sixty million followers on Instagram and a part-time modeling gig. He’s just got that snobby rich guy vibe about him. Even if he were in rags, he’d probably still look like the kind of dude that can spend eight thousand dollars on a pair of shoes and still complain they aren’t high enough quality.

That’s the kind of look he gives Lance now: a grimaced once over like he’s just been offered coffee with sugar.

“What are you doing here,” Lance says, rather than responding to Lotor’s (clearly fake!) attempt at pleasantries.

Allura, sitting on the chair across from Lotor, offers, “We were just discussing the events at the Garrison.”

Lance considers this, looking between Lotor and Allura as if to gauge the truth behind that statement. He crosses his arms over his chest. “That happened a week ago. What brings you all the way to headquarters to discuss it _now_?”

“Unfortunately, the soonest flight I could make wasn’t until this morning,” Lotor explains with that painful looking smile still in place. Lance can’t imagine he’d be trying for something like that if Allura weren’t still in the room. She’s the only reason he’s working with them at all, Lance is pretty sure. If it hadn’t been for her odd trust in Lotor—as well as his generous, _generous_ donations—he wouldn’t have been allowed on board with the project. Plus, Lance can’t imagine he’d ever want anything to do with this kind of alliance if someone he valued and (Lance hates to admit it) cared about wasn’t spearheading it.

Not to mention the publicity of it all. Good press for a shady guy.  

“Too busy to check in?”

“Sadly so. At least until today, that is.” He sets his cup of tea on the coffee table in front of him and stands from the couch, brushing down the lapel of his blazer as if to get rid of imaginary crumbs. “I’m here now, so, Echo, why don’t we discuss the break in at the Gila Bend Garrison last week in full?”

He moves to stand in front of Lance, and like this, the few inches Lotor has over Lance are painfully obvious. Lance pulls his shoulders back and raises his chin, refusing to be looked down on. Through his mask, he meets Lotor’s eyes, keeping his expression as blank as possible.

“It looked like you and Allura were already talking about it,” he says. “Why would you need me? Don’t you trust her word?”

“I trust her word more than you could imagine, and trust _me_ when I say that I would love if she could give your statement for you. But, seeing as you were the one who dealt with the thief, as well as the one who ultimately allowed him to get away…” He trails off, his eyes flittering away from Lance’s and to the doorway, just long enough to get his suggestion across.

Lance’s back stiffens. His jaw tenses.

God, he really hates this guy.

“Fine.” He uncrosses his arms. “Then let’s talk.”

At the words, Lotor ends their stand-off, brushing past Lance as if nothing had happened. “We should take this to the conference room, I believe,” he says, already heading out the door. “Make it a little more formal, you know.”

Lance looks to Hunk and Coran as if asking for an explanation, but Coran offers nothing and Hunk just shrugs, like _I don’t get it any more than you_. Allura follows Lotor out the door, touching a hand to Lance’s shoulder briefly in comfort before disappearing over the threshold.

Guess he has no choice, then. With one last look at Hunk, he follows.

\--

“Hey.”

Keith looks up from his plate, where he’d been scooting around a piece of cooked sweet potato for the past few minutes.

“Hey,” he says back, unsure.

Across the table, Adam’s lips quirk up into a half-smile, like he wants to find something funny in Keith’s response but doesn’t quite have the heart to. He looks back to his own plate. He’s just as guilty of playing with his dinner instead of eating it. “You’ve been pretty quiet,” he points out.

“Yeah.”

A raised eyebrow. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say to that?”

“…Yeah.”

“Keith.”

“What?” He sets his fork down. The noise it makes against his plate is _loud_. “What do you _want_ me to say, Adam?”

Adam looks at him. He doesn’t speak. Just…looks. It’s the kind of look that Keith’s father used to give him, way, way long ago, when Keith would pout for not getting his way, or when he’d get caught telling a lie and yet still refuse to come clean. Keith hates that look. He isn’t—he isn’t a kid anymore, he’s not a child. He doesn’t want that look.

But there’s something in Adam’s expression that he didn’t see from his dad. It’s the pity, maybe. The sympathy. Or maybe it’s the fact that Keith knows that Adam gets it, too.

Either way, his shoulders deflate. All the anger in him, which surged up so suddenly, sizzles out into only shame for the explosion. He lowers his eyes from Adam’s to his dinner, the untouched food waiting to be eaten once he regains his appetite. Tough luck. He can’t imagine that happening anytime soon.

“Sorry,” he mumbles to the sweet potatoes. He feels rather than sees the way Adam looks back to his own plate, then there’s the sound of silverware being picked up from the dish again, and he takes the first bite of dinner all night. Chews. Swallows. Keith scoots his corn around the dish, to one side then the other and back again, a methodic race with no one.

“Don’t apologize,” Adam says. “I…I can’t blame you. I just thought tonight might be…okay, for us. If we’re together.”

Keith doesn’t think there’s any way for either of them to be “okay” tonight. There’s only better or worse. And so far, Keith’s night has been closer to the latter.

But he can’t imagine what else he would expect on the one-year anniversary of his brother’s disappearance.

Keith was just getting off his shift at the auto repair shop where he works when he got a call from Adam, asking if he wanted to swing by Adam’s apartment tonight for them to have dinner together. “I cooked too much for one person,” he’d said with a laugh, but Keith knew that was a lie, spoken into existence only for Keith’s sake.

It’s not unusual for them to see each other every now and then, Keith running by the apartment because something compelled him to, or Adam dropping by to see Keith while he’s at work, or the occasional text of _you want to get something to eat tonight?_ Just to catch up. Just because they miss _it_. The past. Each other.

Shiro.

Keith’s adopted brother is always the elephant in the room when they’re together, but tonight especially isn’t great. Keith has a love-hate relationship with being around Adam. Part of him never wants to leave him, wants to move in to this shitty one-room apartment and laugh and talk with his brother’s boyfriend for the rest of his life because Shiro is still _here_ , when he’s with Adam. When Keith is alone, when he’s at his excuse for a home or mindless at work, it’s sometimes like Shiro never existed at all, like Keith has been alone his whole life and he just made up the most important person to him, ever—but when he’s with Adam, when they’re talking about their day or even just sitting in silence, there’s that connection to Shiro. That undeniable fact of what brought them together, the common thread between them.

It’s nostalgia that tries to cement the soles of Keith’s shoes to the floor every time he visits. The yearning from grief to return to the way it used to be.

But—Keith can’t live here. Can’t stay here. He gets caught up in it. Gets…distracted, gets in his head. Keith is always in his head if he doesn’t try _not_ to be, but it’s worse when he’s with Adam, when he’s only feet away from Shiro’s old room, when he can still, somehow, smell his brother in this room, when he’s thinking about Shiro’s boots at the door, his leather jacket no doubt still in the closet because Keith knows Adam never got rid of his stuff, never had the heart to start cleaning it out.

When he’s like this, when he’s feeling the effects of grief, the unproductive ones, the sadness that clamps its jaws around his chest and pulls and pulls and pulls and threatens to unravel Keith another time—when he is feeling anything but anger and determination to get his brother back—it keeps him from moving forward. From _finding_ Shiro.

So he can’t stay here.

That’s the part he hates about being with Adam. That he can’t stay here. That it’s only momentary. It makes leaving that much harder.

“Did they mention it?” Keith asks, not looking up from his fork. “At school, I mean.”

He doesn’t have to specify what he means by _it_. Adam sighs, quiet enough that Keith barely hears it. “No. They didn’t.”

Keith scoffs. “Figures.”

Adam doesn’t deny that one. Despite currently being employed there, Adam understands Keith’s disdain for the Garrison, and he doesn’t try to redirect it or change his mind anymore. It’d be pointless by now, anyway, when Keith no longer attends school there.

“What have you been up to?” Adam asks, instead of pressing the subject.

“Working,” Keith says.

“Busy at the shop, it seems.”

He nods, stabbing his fork through a sweet potato. After a moment of debating, he finally forces himself to eat it. He chews, but it doesn’t taste like much. His appetite has been nonexistent for about a week now; every day that goes by is a struggle of forgetting to eat and then forcing something down.  

This, surprisingly, is new—the lack of appetite. But he writes most things off lately as being at the fault of the anniversary.

To some extent, he wasn’t expecting the one-year mark to be so…hard for him. Maybe he’d thought that the fact that, despite the official reports, he _knows_ Shiro isn’t dead would keep him from feeling the full effects of grief. But he guesses that three hundred and sixty-five days of everyone telling him his brother is really gone, with still no larger leads to Shiro’s whereabouts than he had a few months ago, has taken a bit of a toll on him.

“—eith?”

“Huh?” He looks up.

Adam is staring at him behind his rectangular glasses, his eyebrows pinched together in worry. “Did you hear what I said?”

“No, sorry. I was just…thinking,” Keith says. “What, uh, what did you say?”

“I asked if you knew about the break in.”

“What break in?”

“At the Garrison,” Adam says.

Keith’s heart skips a beat. “No. Haven’t heard about it.”

Adam nods like that’s to be expected, which—to him, it is. Keith outwardly has no more ties to the Garrison. No way of knowing about the break in, if he weren’t paying attention to the news. He never did, before. Adam doesn’t know how much more intently Keith’s listened to the radio the past few months, how many nights he’s spent up trying to connect the dots. It goes without saying that Adam doesn’t know about Keith’s night errands either.

He paraphrases the events, the basics that they released on the news and some extra information he must’ve gotten from Iverson or one of the other officers actually on site at the time. Keith listens with a blank face, suddenly so interested in eating his dinner that he can’t be bothered with much response other than a few nods in acknowledgment.

At the end of it all, Adam frowns at the table. “Things have been weird around here lately. Ever since Shiro…”

Died. Disappeared. The word he uses depends on the day, on how hopeless he’s feeling, on how much weight he wants to give to the reports that document Takashi Shirogane as officially _dead_. Keith can’t remember ever referring to Shiro as _dead_. At least, not out loud.

That feels too close to giving up. And Keith is nothing if not stubborn.

“Yeah,” Keith can’t help but agree. “They have.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh wowza! who was that person on the bus? why are heros going missing? why did adam cook sweet potatoes with corn when there r so many better combinations of vegetables to cook? drop a comment and u just might find out!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The thing about Keith Kogane is that he’s sort of a mystery Lance has been trying to crack since he was twelve.
> 
> \--
> 
> Lance goes to get his car. Keith wears headbands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is late once again and this time i have no excuse except that i struggled rlly badly with this chapter for some reason? like. idk why.
> 
> anyway! our protags finally meet?? maybeeee?????? 
> 
> also plot moves forward
> 
> next chapter is keiths pov. get excited!
> 
> also i drew some stuff for this au which u can find [here](http://viscrael.tumblr.com/post/176458298225/did-i-draw-stuff-for-my-own-superhero-au-maybe-so)

“He’s such an asshole.”

On the other line, Hunk makes a vague, whining noise, something that Lance interprets to mean, _ehhh I don’t know that I would say THAT…_

“He is!” Lance reiterates. “There’s no way you think he’s an okay guy after all the shit he said to me yesterday, right?”

_“I don’t know, dude,”_ Hunk says. _“It’s kinda, I mean…It sucks, but you have to admit he was sort of just doing his job.”_

“Where in his job description does it say he needs to chew me out in front of God and everyone?”

“ _It was just Allura…”_

“That might as well be everyone!” Lance huffs. A woman pushing a stroller approaches down the sidewalk, coming from the opposite direction, and Lance moves out of her way politely, smiling at the kid as they pass.

“ _I’m not saying that what he said was_ nice, _it’s just that…I don’t think he’s_ as _bad of a guy as you think he is. I mean, look on the bright side. You didn’t get suspended or fired, even though I know it sucks that he chewed you out, right? He still wants you on the team.”_

Lance returns to his phone, pressed against his ear. He shoves his free hand into his jacket pockets, not bothering to keep the frown off his face. “He’s not the only one in charge of that, though. If Allura didn’t like me, I bet he would’ve fired me for lookin’ at him wrong.”

_“But he didn’t. So he can’t be_ that _bad, right?”_

“He’s the son of you-know-who.”

“ _Voldemort_?”

“Hunk.”

_“What?”_

“This is serious,” Lance says. “And don’t you think it’s even more suspicious that he didn’t even, like, suspend my hero duties after that? Like, let’s not sugarcoat it, I fucked up real bad, okay, so shouldn’t I have been at least—I don’t know, kept off the team or something while you guys keep looking for this guy? Assigned to paperwork duties? _Something_ other than just a lecture?”

_“Are you seriously upset that you didn’t get in_ more _trouble?”_

“No! Maybe! I don’t know!”

_“Lance…”_

He bites his lip and looks at his feet as he walks. Someone bumps into him, and he offers a small _sorry._

There’s rustling like Hunk is moving around. _“Is everything okay?”_

“Everything’s fine,” Lance mumbles. “Why wouldn’t everything be fine? I just fucked up big time, let our bad guy get away, caused us all a billion more hours of work for what should’ve been the easiest assignment we’ve gotten yet, and now my best friend thinks I’m crazy because I think Lotor’s got a hidden agenda. Not to mention all the college bullshit on top of this. I’m fantastic.”

There’s a pause over the other line, and then Hunk sighs into the receiver. “ _I’m sorry. I don’t think you’re crazy_.”

“Coulda fooled me.”

“ _And you didn’t fuck up_ that _badly. You need to stop beating yourself up about all this.”_

“You don’t have to lie for my sake, dude. Being honest about it isn’t beating myself up.”

There’s silence. Lance turns the corner on the street. It’s dusk, and the city is covered in a red haze. Downtown isn’t as crowded at this time as Lance had expected it to be, which he’s thankful for as he steps out of the way of a few teenagers on skateboards. They shout to each other, something that makes it so Lance has to strain to hear what Hunk finally says next.

_“You never did say exactly what happened.”_

“What?”

_“You didn’t ever tell us how you let the guy go. I mean, you_ did, _but you could’ve blasted him at any time before he got away. Why didn’t you?”_

Lance falters, caught off guard by the question.

Why _hadn’t_ he?

“It’s complicated,” he mumbles. He passes a nail salon, then a small, nondescript building that he recognizes to mean he’s near his destination.

“ _Can you at least try to explain?”_

R&N Auto Services. It’s a small building with a large parking lot behind it, sitting in its own lot away from the other shops and stores downtown. It must double as the owner’s house, Lance thinks, as a very cute, very excited Husky barks at him through the screen door.

He steps inside, offering the dog his hand to sniff. “I can,” he says, “but…not now.”

“ _I thought you needed someone to talk to while you walked.”_

“Yeah, but I’m here now.” He gives the dog a few pets before moving past it. It barks in protest, clearly wanting more attention.

“ _Is that a dog?”_

To the left, there’s a small room where he talked to the owner the last time he was here, but there’s no one around right now. In front of him is an open door, leading into a garage. The sounds of someone tinkering drift from the open door.

“Yeah, it’s probably Rolo’s,” Lance says, heading into the garage. A man—Rolo, maybe?—has his back to Lance, bent over a motorcycle and doing something to its tires.

_“Fine,”_ Hunk sighs. _“Just promise you’ll actually talk to me about it when you get home.”_

The person stands up. Lance opens his mouth to offer Hunk a promise and then hang up so he can get what he came here for, but the words die in his throat when the man turns around.

_Of fucking course it’s Keith._

_“…Lance?”_

“Uh,” Keith says at the same time as Hunk. He blinks. “Sorry. I’ll, um, go get Rolo for you.”

Keith—Keith Kogane—the same Keith that was in Lance’s class at the Garrison—the same Keith who disappeared less than half-way through senior year—the same Keith that everyone had assumed had left the state, or maybe even the country, or who’d landed himself in jail, or maybe in a gang, or—whatever, there were a lot of rumors, okay—

It’s the same Keith that Lance was maybe a little obsessed with, who’d he’d maybe _still_ been a little obsessed with even since graduating, that stands in front of him, black leather gloves on and oil somehow smeared across his right cheek and bangs pulled back by a red headband and—

He looks older. This probably shouldn’t surprise Lance, considering it’s been a year since they last saw each other and, hey, Lance probably looks older too since becoming a hero, but for some reason seeing Keith taller, more muscular than he remembers, with his hair grown out and his jaw sharper somehow, throws Lance off.

Because, see. The thing about Keith Kogane is that he’s sort of a mystery Lance has been trying to crack since he was twelve. They went to the same middle school together, and even back then Keith was this mysterious, cool, loner guy that was naturally good at everything. As in, _everything_. He was top of his class, despite seemingly not giving a shit about his education, and despite his attempts to stay alone, people seemed to flock to him. They liked him. For some reason, his constant scowl and constant rule violation and constant need to get in petty fights drew a little bit of a crowd to him. Everyone either loved Keith Kogane, or hated him.

For a long time, Lance was the former. He wasn’t able to admit it for a long, long time, but he’d developed a little bit of a crush on the guy.

Okay, a _lot_ a bit.

When he wasn’t looking, Lance had been sucked in by Keith’s angry front and rebellious streak and oddly good lucks. If he had to choose, it probably started when he was thirteen, when Keith more or less stuck up for Lance from these assholes who were picking on Lance for his size (he hasn’t always been this long-legged). He remembers Keith spitting something in his defense, something completely unremarkable like _leave him alone_ or _stop it_ , but to Lance, who hadn’t yet found community with Hunk and Pidge and Shay, it was the nicest thing anyone at that school had ever done for him. For years, he pined after the guy, rejoicing when they shared a class and, embarrassingly enough, completely losing his cool anytime Keith so much as looked at him.

But he didn’t stay enamored. His opinion of Keith started to switch around freshman year, when Keith’s place as The Best In Their Class was really cemented and Lance was suddenly expected to compare to him. All he heard from Iverson was _a few points behind Kogane_ and _not quite_ and _you’ll have to work harder than that, McClain, if you want to catch up_.

That, plus the fact that he was sure Keith didn’t even know he existed, melted his admiration into resentment. Instead of an obsession born of infatuation, it switched to an obsession born of hatred.

But then, in the second semester of their senior year, one of their teachers died. Everyone mourned him, but Keith was clearly the closest to him out of everyone. Lance never figured out how they knew each other or what their relationship was, but he knew that it affected Keith, _bad_.

Within a week, Keith was getting in fights again, something he’d stopped once high school started. He nearly beat a kid to a pulp out in the courtyard for saying something that Lance never quite caught. The kid’s parents were called. It was a whole ordeal.

Before they could expel him, Keith dropped out.

Where he went, Lance didn’t know. _Doesn’t_ know. He heard that the next morning after the fight, when Keith’s roommate woke up, his bed was empty and all his stuff was gone. There was footage on the cams later of Keith sneaking off campus, but why security didn’t do anything about it as he was leaving, Lance never found out.

Considering Keith’s popularity, rumors and theories were passed around the student body’s lips. Some were more reasonable, like that he’d ran away to stay with some of the instructor’s relatives or an old foster family or something, but others were more out there: _I heard he joined a gang; I heard he’s running from the cops; I heard he has something to do with Professor Shirogane’s death._

_Isn’t it weird?_ kids said. _They were_ both _on that motorcycle, supposedly. How did Shirogane die from that when Keith didn’t even break anything?_

_I wonder if he knows something he won’t tell anyone._

Lance always hated that particular line of gossip.

But he couldn’t say he hadn’t joined in on everyone else’s curiosity. He’d thought about what happened to Keith way more often than he’d like to admit. When they graduated, he couldn’t help but imagine Keith up there with them, called between Mariyah Kirkland and Seth Krebs. He should’ve been glad that Keith dropped out; it only meant Lance wouldn’t be compared to him anymore. But he couldn’t find it himself to be happy when the circumstances were so horrible.

At Professor Shirogane’s funeral, Lance remembered seeing Keith with Shirogane’s previous boyfriend. Huddled together. It was the only time Lance could ever remember seeing Keith accept a hug.

Lance had cried. He wondered for a long time if Keith did, too.

Now, as Keith moves to turn around and disappear inside, Lance says, “Wait!”

He blurts it way too loudly, and on the other line Lance vaguely registers Hunk asking him something, but he hangs up. He’ll apologize to Hunk and explain himself once he gets home. Right now, he just doesn’t want Keith to go inside.

For some reason, Lance gets the feeling that if Keith leaves, they won’t ever see each other again.

“Um,” Keith says. Has his voice always been that deep?

“I’m here to pick up my car,” Lance explains hurriedly. He shoves his phone in his jacket pocket and tries to compose himself as much as he can. Slower, he says, “It’s, uh, an Oldsmobile Aurora.”

“Right.” Keith licks his lips. He wipes his oil-covered palms on a rag hooked to his jeans’ belt. His pants are dirt-stained and ripped at the knee, but an organic rip, like he’d hooked it on something and tore the fabric, not like it’s a fashion statement. Somehow he makes it one anyway. “Let me, um…Follow me.”

He seems flustered, but Lance can’t imagine why. Maybe he’s not used to talking to the customers, Lance guesses. Maybe he usually just deals with the cars themselves. That, at least, aligns perfectly with the image of Keith Lance had built so long ago. A loner. By himself.

What _doesn’t_ align is the way that Keith is clearly uncomfortable, his shoulders hunched to make himself smaller, cracking his knuckles as an obvious sign of nerves. Lance can’t remember seeing him like this at school, even when they were in middle school.

Lance follows him back into the building, into the small, empty room he’d passed earlier. The dog from earlier follows them, too. Keith moves behind the desk, papers spread everywhere, while Lance stands at the doorway, scratching the dog behind its ears while it pants and wags its tail happily.

“Oldsmobile,” Keith mumbles, shuffling through a stack of papers on the desk.

“Name’s Lance.”

He looks up, blinking.

Lance fumbles to finish, “Lance McClain. Is the name it should be under. The car, I mean.”

“…Right.” Keith flips through the papers one last time, seems to find what he was looking for, and slides open a drawer in the dresser. Lance hears the sound of keys jingling before Keith is standing straight up, the drawer closed again with his hand outstretched and Lance’s car keys dangling between his fingers. “Here. It says you already paid?”

Lance leaves the dog to step further into the room and take his keys. “Last time I was here, yeah.”

“Then you’re all set.” Keith moves out from behind the desk and brushes past Lance without looking him in the eye. The dog watches this exchange. “Your car’s out back.”

“Uh—” Lance struggles for something to say. He doesn’t know why he’s so desperate right now, why it feels like something final if he leaves. Maybe he should be glad that he got to see Keith here; maybe this should feel like closure, after all, from a full year of wondering and maybe even worrying about what Keith is up to, what he’s been doing since the death of Takashi Shirogane that so clearly wrecked him.

But he doesn’t want to go yet.

“Show me?” he says, following Keith again back into the garage. Keith is crossing the room to the motorcycle he’d been working on, but he pauses at the question.

Lance continues, “Where my car is. There’s, uh…you guys have a pretty big parking lot.”

That one isn’t a lie, but it’s obvious to Lance after he asks just how weird it must sound to Keith. Especially if Keith doesn’t remember who he is. Or maybe it’s worse if he does? At least if he doesn’t recognize him, he’d just interpret it as some weird guy who came into the shop once, but if he _does_ know that it’s Lance from school, maybe he thinks that Lance is…

Something.

Lance doesn’t know what Keith would think of that. He kind of wishes he did.

But, whatever he’s thinking about it all, Keith nods. “Okay.”

Again, Lance follows Keith, this time through a door in the garage that leads outside to the back parking lot. It really is huge, stretching far out, most of the spaces occupied with cars. From the front, the lot looks small and unsuspecting, its space hidden.

As they walk, Lance asks, trying his best to sound casual, “So, where’s Rolo?”

“He had to run some errands,” Keith says.

“Ah.”

It’s quiet after that. Keith isn’t going to offer any attempt at keeping the conversation going, and Lance—well, he knows what he _wants_ to ask, but he doesn’t think it’s appropriate to bring that up now. Plus, he doubts Keith would ever tell him, regardless of how curious Lance is or how well-meaning or…whatever.

Instead, they walk the rest of the way to Lance’s car in silence. The sun has almost completely set by now, and it’s chilly. It’s not usually this cold in November, but the rainstorms that have plagued the area recently brought a cold front with them. Lance pulls his jacket around himself tighter.

They come up on his car. He clicks his keys to unlock it, the front lights flashing in response. “Thanks,” he says.

“No problem.” Keith is already turned around to go back inside as Lance is getting in the driver’s seat.

He disappears into the garage, the door shutting behind him. Lance watches him go before he slides the key into the ignition.

Keith smelled like gasoline.   

\--

When he gets back to the apartment, Lance tries to explain himself even as he’s taking his shoes off at the front door.

“Hunk, I know what you’re thinking, but I actually had a good reason this time—”

It’s only when he looks up and finds Hunk sitting on the couch, eyes trained on the TV, that Lance stops.

_“…more details on this story to come,”_ the newscaster says solemnly. Across the bottom of the screen reads:

SUPERHEROINE SCARLET ANGEL FOUND DEAD IN PALM SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA

Hunk is sitting forward in his seat, eyes moving between the screen and Lance. His phone sits on the coffee table, lit up with a call screen, speakerphone on.

“ _Is that Lance?_ ” It’s Coran. Lance belatedly closes the door behind himself and moves into the apartment, coming to sit next to Hunk on the couch. The newscaster moves on to speak about some other breaking news, unrelated to the death they just dropped on everyone.

He looks between the TV and Hunk’s phone. “What happened?”

“We don’t know yet,” Hunk says, sounding tired. “But the funeral is on Sunday.”

\--

Lance has only ever been to two funerals.

The first was his grandfather’s. It was his freshman year of high school. The service was somber, Lance dressed in a white button-up with a collar that was too stiff to be comfortable and a black tie that he didn’t actually know how to tie yet. The rest of the funeral, though, was nothing like he expected. It felt more like a family reunion than it did a gathering for his grandfather’s death. His aunt teased him about the girl he was seeing at the time. His little cousins were running around. Even his dad, who Lance had expected to be more torn up about his father’s death, was standing with some family friends and telling a story, the corners of his eyes crinkling up when he laughed.

There was mourning, of course, as there always is; but more than anything, it was a celebration of the life they’d lost, a moment for everyone to reflect and love and think how grateful they were for Lance’s grandfather.

The second was Takashi Shirogane’s, the professor that suddenly passed Lance’s senior year. That was nothing like the first. There was no celebration of life or good stories told or anything of that nature; it was only somber, almost everyone in tears, the whole school in mourning. Humbled by the untimely death, frightened by it. The boyfriend Shirogane left behind spoke at the service, about how it was difficult, but Shiro would have wanted them to move on, he would’ve wanted them to remember him but still keep fighting.

Of the two, this one is definitely closer to the second.

It’s bleak. Even the sky is dark as they stand outside in the cemetery, Allura to his right, Hunk to his left, Pidge and Shay and even Coran in attendance. The clouds are heavy with the threat of rain, the sky a deep gray that fits the image of a young mother with her eyes bloodshot from weeping and arms over her chest, hands on each elbow. Lance can see her digging her sharp fingernails into her elbows, the red paint even more prominent against how pale she is.

Her name is Melissa Guerra, and her daughter, Carmen, known to A.L.T.E.A. as well as the city of Palm Springs under the superhero alias of Scarlet Angel, is dead.

Lance doesn’t blame her for the way she clutches herself.

He stands with his hands clasped respectfully in front of him. All of them are in their superhero gear, despite Allura telling Ms. Guerra that they would be willing to arrive in formal attire more appropriate for this kind of event—but Ms. Guerra assured her that she didn’t want them modifying anything, didn’t want them dressing in blacks and suits and tasteful heels when that wasn’t what her daughter would have wanted. She would have wanted them to display their alliance proudly. Loudly.

_And the press_ , she’d said. _It’s…safer for you if you stay in your normal costumes. No modification._

So they’d done as she’d asked, and Lance feels more than a little bit out of place standing next to the rest of his squadron when everyone else is dressed so…appropriately. They’re a straight line of rainbow in a sea of blacks and grays, masked faces when everyone else’s grief is so plainly shown on their expressions.

Lance hadn’t known Scarlet Angel very well, but he knew _of_ her. She was an up-and-coming superhero working in Palm Springs, California, only seventeen years old and yet already so promising in her abilities, her powers. Allura had mentioned her to Lance a few times when discussing their allies in other cities, as they talked about expanding their outreach and really _connecting_ with superheroes all over the country, and eventually the world—

But he had never seen Scarlet Angel in action.

He never would, now.

They say it was a car accident.

Middle of the night. Coming home late. Scarlet Angel could fly, but she didn’t use her powers when she wasn’t on duty, so she was driving somewhere, a friend in her passenger seat, or maybe not a friend—Lance didn’t know. Maybe she was tired. Maybe the truck driver headed towards her was tired, too. Either way, the second person ended up with four broken ribs, a broken leg, and a concussion.

Carmen didn’t make it out alive.

_Too gruesome,_ Lance imagines the doctors told Ms. Guerra, when they were trying to break the news to her that she couldn’t see her daughter’s body. _Too badly injured. There’s only so much of her left. We can’t let you see her. Best not to let you see her._

He thinks about this as he watches the white, closed casket as it’s lowered into the ground. The minister is saying something, giving some prayers, offering some words, and Ms. Guerra is up on her feet, and she’s placing some flowers onto the casket, like a last minute decision, and next to him, Lance can hear the sounds of Allura trying to stifle her crying.

Ms. Guerra looks numb when she returns to her seat. Lance feels his own eyes begin to well up.

There is nothing about this funeral that felt celebratory, Lance thinks, as, once it’s over, he follows Coran to the parking lot. Nothing celebratory about another life lost.

This is the fourth death of a superhero, caused by something un-superhero related, that Lance has heard of since joining A.L.T.E.A. He doesn’t know if four is a good number, or a bad number, or if maybe he should just be thankful that it wasn’t him that left too early, that it wasn’t any of his friends or family that died in an accident coming home or who seemingly disappeared without a trace one night.

Maybe he should just be glad he’s still okay.

But he’s not glad. He’s just. Hurting. For Ms. Guerra and everyone else.

In the parking lot, Hunk tosses his car keys to Lance, who catches them easily. “You get to drive back.”

Lance turns the keys over in his hand, fiddling with the small flashlight and the little giraffe keychain Shay got Hunk a few months ago before pressing the button to unlock it. The car beeps twice.

“Actually,” he says, as he opens the driver’s side door and gets in, Hunk already climbing into the passenger seat, “there’s someone I wanted to visit on the way.”

Hunk raises both his eyebrows just enough to let Lance know that he’s surprised by this development, but not judging just yet. Everything about him looks tired from the emotional weight of the past hour, and Lance can’t help but agree that he’s in the same boat of wanting nothing more than to nap, but it’s important to him. Now more than ever.

“Alright,” Hunk says. He buckles his seatbelt. “As long as you’re paying if we need to stop for gas.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> plot slowly chugs forward. think it might be more than 20 chaps if each one ends up only being 4-6k like they have been :/ but we'll c
> 
> like always, comments r loved and appreciated! also, yall know of my main blog, but i have a vld side blog now too! u can follow it [here](http://galrnkeith.tumblr.com) if u want :^)

**Author's Note:**

> comments r loved & appreciated
> 
> come talk to me on [tumblr](http://viscrael.tumblr.com)


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